


non possum fugere

by fortunehasgivenup



Series: prompt fills [28]
Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Artists, F/M, Forbidden Love, Prompt Fill, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:34:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25252435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortunehasgivenup/pseuds/fortunehasgivenup
Summary: Beth has never met her husband-to-be and has spent a great deal of effort ignoring her impending marriage, but this becomes much more difficult to do when her aunt hires a painter so that they can send a portrait to her future spouse. She cannot help but be intrigued by the painter, Rio, and before long, that interest blossoms into more.(Basically Portrait of a Lady on Fire AU)
Relationships: Beth Boland/Rio
Series: prompt fills [28]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1608919
Comments: 32
Kudos: 294





	non possum fugere

**Author's Note:**

> Anonymous said: SO i am not sure if you’re actively taking prompts but!!! you were literally the first person i thought of for this. just watched Portrait of a Lady on Fire and was dying for a brio au?? like where rio is the painter and beth is being painted for her suitor or whatever. i’ve loved alllll of your historical aus!
> 
> Notes: Like Portrait of a Lady on Fire, this is set in the 18th century, but I haven't really made any references or attempted historical accuracy. It is set in the Netherlands for no reason other than the fact that I love Dutch baroque paintings.

The painter is nothing like Beth imagined. He’s young, for one. Handsome. Her aunt seems taken aback too, but his credentials are impeccable and his name doesn’t carry a whiff of scandal, which is more than enough for him to have been hired. She only catches a peek of him through the crack in the door between her aunt’s study and the back hallway, but it’s enough to make an impression on her.

“I do not want to be painted,” Beth tells her aunt again that night at supper.

Aunt Marjorie levels Beth with a look. “And I did not want to have to find husbands for two of my nieces,” she says simply, “but here I am. The Boland man is a good match, even if he is English.”

Beth purses her lips at the thought of moving to England. Even though it is where her own mother was from, she has never been. 

“We should practice your English,” Aunt Marjorie says, switching into that language. “I hear he speaks that. Likely he has Greek and Latin too, he’s gone to all the right schools, but I cannot see a reason to teach you either of those. It’s unlikely that your servants will be fluent in Horace and I doubt you would take to it.”

Beth is glad that Annie is still allowed to eat in the nursery and generally isn’t subjected to Aunt Marjorie’s harsh words. She’s always been critical of her brother’s half English daughters, even when their parents were alive. But she is their only family and she is aware of what people would say if she were to mistreat her nieces too obviously, so she has been doing her part.

————————————

Beth has been sitting for the painter for a few days when she finally strikes up the courage to say something to him. All he’s done so far is bark orders at her.

Chin up. Hand to the left. Look at me. Stop gripping your book so tightly.

“What is your accent?” Beth asks, curious despite herself.

“Spanish,” he tells her with a raised eyebrow.

She flushes. “Who taught you Dutch?”

“My teacher.” He keeps brushing paint onto the canvas as Beth grows more and more frustrated.

“Your teacher here or in Spain?”

“Neither,” he says.

“Are you always so coy with your answers?” Beth snaps, keeping her hands folded neatly in her lap. 

His lips twitch. He’s amused by this! By her. 

“I suppose that’s answer enough.” Beth stands. “That’s enough for today.”

He lets her go without a word to the contrary, still painting.

“What does it look like?” Annie asks when they take a walk that evening. “Your portrait.”

“I don’t know,” Beth confesses. “He won’t let me look.”

Annie gets a mischievous grin and Beth groans, already aware what she’s going to suggest.

“Let’s go look!” 

She should scold her sister, tell Annie no, but she wants to know what it looks like too, so she allows herself to pulled inside.

The door is locked, but Beth and Annie learned ages ago that most of the doors can be unlocked quite easily. This is one of those doors and it gives under pressure applied to just the right spot.

Annie heads right for the canvas, but Beth follows her a little more slowly. She’s worried about how he has painted her. It’s clear that he doesn’t think much of her. He probably thinks her to be a spoiled young woman being fattened up for slaughter like a hog.

But she wants to see it, so she can’t delay forever.

She’s almost disappointed when she sees the painting. There isn’t much detail yet and the figure on the canvas is just the shape of her, no more. 

Annie quickly loses interest and starts to pick up the various props that are set out on a little table out of the way.

“What are you doing here?”

Annie drops the book that Beth has been holding in her hands for hours and hours, spinning to face the person that has just caught them. Beth doesn’t turn, she already knows who it is.

“Sorry,” Annie rushes to say, “I wanted to see it and I asked Beth to come with me!”

Beth hears a soft laugh that finally makes her look over her shoulder to see him - the painter. Her breath catches at the sight of him. Gone are his vest and shoes. His shirt is halfway undone. It is entirely inappropriate. Even if Annie is here, a little girl is hardly considered an acceptable chaperone.

“And your verdict?” He comes into the room.

Annie smiles, happy to be asked. “My sister is very pretty,” she says.

The painter nods.

“But you haven’t got her hair right.”

The painter smiles. “No?”

“You’ve painted it brown and it’s red.” Annie glares at him.

He laughs. “It’s not done yet,” he tells her. "I layer the paints so that you can see every colour. Your sister’s hair has a hint of brown in it, which works as the base. Then I put lighter colours on top.”

Annie doesn’t look convinced.

“How about I give you a lesson tomorrow?” 

Her sister lights up. “Would you?”

“I’ll have to ask your aunt,” he says, “but if she agrees, I will. Now get out.”

His words are harsh, but his tone isn’t and when Beth passes him at the door, he gives her a strange look. 

—————————————————

Drawing is one of the few hobbies and skills allowed to girls like them, so Aunt Marjorie agrees to let the painter give her and Annie lessons.

“Only nature scenes,” she warns Beth.

Beth agrees happily. She doesn’t even mind when they’re given two chaperones for their walk through the garden.

“Do I have to call you master?” Annie asks as they sit on a blanket spread over the grass.

He laughs. “You don’t want to?”

Annie gives him an unimpressed look. “You aren’t old like the others.”

“No, I suppose I am not. You may call me Rio,” he tells them. “During our lessons,” he adds. 

He’s right, Beth doesn’t think that Aunt Marjorie would allow the lack of formality.

Beth listens as he talks about the colours of the flowers in front of them. Annie peppers him with questions, but he gives as good as he gets. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen Annie so engaged.

“It’s green, yes, but what type of green?” he presses. “What makes this green different from the one in the trees?”

“It’s not as dark,” Annie replies.

“So what do you think has to be done to paint it?”

“It’s more yellow,” Beth speaks up.

Rio looks at her. Annie does as well, but Beth’s eyes are on him.

“There’s more yellow to this green than the one in the trees. And you wouldn’t add anything to darken it, like black. If anything, you might add white to make it lighter.”

He nods. “Highlights and shadows,” he says. 

In the afternoon, when the light is best in the room that has been assigned as his studio, Rio paints her again.

Today, she is more curious about the colours that he’s mixing and watches as he makes subtle adjustments. 

“What are you working on right now?” she asks him.

He doesn’t look away from the canvas. “Your ear.”

“My ear?” Beth laughs.

That makes him look up. “Yes, your ear.”

She isn’t sure if it’s the fact that he’s actually looking her in the eye for once, rather than whatever part he’s currently painting or the fact that she’s now had a conversation with him, but she blushes.

“Have you ever looked at an ear?” he asks with a slight smile. “All kinds of details in the curve of it. The hollows. How yours turns a little red when light from the sun or a fire is shining through it. So yes, I am taking my time with your ear.”

Beth can’t stop thinking about that all evening, reaching up to touch her ears from time to time. She burns red every time that she thinks about it.

—————————————————

It’s their third day of art lessons and they’re wandering around the fringes of the garden so that they can practice sketching different shapes.

“Thank you,” Beth tells him. Rio. “For giving her this. Giving us this.”

He nods, then says something curious. “You don’t want to marry.”

She laughs. “Does anyone?”

“I’ve known many people happy to pledge their lives to one another,” he says. “Eager, even.”

“Are you married?”

He shakes his head. “No. I thought that I would once, but the life of a painter’s wife wasn’t for her.”

“What is the life of a painter’s wife?” Beth asks.

He stiffens. “That’s enough talk for today,” he says and walks a little faster to catch up with Annie.

As he paints her that afternoon, his mood is just as dark. 

“Have I offended you?” Beth breaks their silence. He doesn’t even lift his head from his work. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I - I don’t know what I did, but I never meant to -“

He sighs and straightens up, putting his brush and palette down. “Why do you always need to fill the silence?”

“Because,” Beth says, “it’s strange, just sitting here. Having you studying me so intently.” She blushes. “Watching you.”

“Watching me?” He steps around his canvas, but leans against his work table rather than coming closer.

Beth nods. “Who else would I be watching? There’s no one else here and I’ve long since memorized the wallpaper.”

Rio’s lips twitch and Beth thinks that he wants to smile. “So you watch me.”

“Just as you do me,” Beth points out.

“I suppose that’s true,” he agrees. “So tell me, what have you noticed?”

Beth watches him closely. “You bite at your lip sometimes, normally when you take a step back from the canvas. You’re thinking about what to do next. You have a little crease, here,” she raises her hand to touch the spot between her brows, “when the colour of your paint is not to your liking.”

His amusement has faded away as she speaks.

“You like to smile and laugh,” she goes on, “and have done so often.”

He pushes up from his table and walks towards the little platform that he has her sitting on.

“But not when you’re painting,” she says. “When you paint, you are always serious.”

“Am I?”

Beth stands up and steps down, meeting him in the middle. “Yes.”

He starts to lift his hand up, then stops himself. It hovers between them for a moment, then drops to his side. “I think that you should go,” he tells her.

Beth flees.

——————————————————

Beth doesn’t make a habit of sneaking out, but sometimes, she slips from the house to join one of the seaside revelries. People there recognize her, of course, but her aunt isn’t exactly well loved, so no one tells on her.

With everything that’s happening at the house, Beth needs an escape, so she puts on her simplest dress and waits until Annie and Aunt Marjorie are asleep.

Halfway there, she catches up to a group of girls around her own age. At first they freeze, some of them work at the house, but then one of them smiles and holds out her arm for Beth to join their group as they gossip.

“The butcher’s son?” Beth asks once she catches onto the thread of things.

Hilde, the girl who had offered her arm, nods. “Brigitte thinks that if she’s able to slip some herbs that her neighbour sold her into his pocket tonight, he’ll fall in love with her.”

“And will he?”

Hilde snorts. “Not in a thousand years. He’s going to marry Anneke, everyone already knows it.”

Beth is quiet for a moment, looking over at Brigitte, who is loudly defending her plan. “Marriage isn’t love,” she says after a moment.

Hilde doesn’t have an answer for that, but it’s just as well, because the bonfire is becoming more visible with every step. 

Though Beth is bold enough to come here, she isn’t quite bold enough to settle into the mixed group and she gravitates towards the women who are laughing and singing at one end, while Hilde makes a beeline for the young man that Beth can only assume that she’s sweet on.

“She’ll be married by the winter, that one,” one of the married women says with a laugh. 

Conversation is about husbands and children and the harvest, things that Beth has little knowledge of, but it’s nice to just listen to them talk and joke. Annie would love to come with her and once she’s a little older, Beth can start to -

Except she cannot bring her. Because she will be in England with her husband. Annie will have to discover this on her own. She’s adventurous enough that she might, but she’ll be so alone. At least now, they have each other.

The melancholic thought sends her walking around the fire to one of the smaller ones only to stop mid step because there’s a man there and he looks up at her with a pair of all too familiar eyes. There’s no one with him, although there are people all around them. He tilts his head like he’s asking her a question and before Beth has a chance to think, she’s finishing her step and taking another.

He flickers in and out of view behind the flames and it reminds Beth of the paintings that she’s seen of the devil - partially hidden by flame and all the more alluring because of it.

She stops a safe distance back.

Without saying anything, he skirts the fire to come to stand next to her, shoulder to shoulder.

“I did not expect to see you,” he says in that grave voice of his, the one that makes Beth feel like he thinks of her as a child.

She lifts her chin. “If you think that I will tell my aunt that you’re spending time with the village girls, don’t worry, I won’t.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

She’s keeping her eyes facing front, watching the flames flicker and dance, rather than looking at him, but she isn’t sure that this makes it any easier. So she turns her head slightly to glance at him only to find that he’s staring at her openly.

“What did you mean?” she asks.

“I mean that -“ he hesitates, then looks around. “I came here to get away from you.”

His answer takes her aback and it shouldn’t hurt as much as it does, but it’s as though he’s taken an ember and held it to her chest. Beth wants to cry. Instead, she nods. “Then I will leave you alone,” she tells him, turning on her heel. She just wants to go home.

His hand grabs hers before she can walk away and Beth swallows at the feel of his bare skin on hers. She looks back at him.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he says. “No matter how hard I try, you’re always there in my head. Not just as you are in the portrait, how I paint you. That is an obsession that I am familiar with, one I would understand.”

Beth curls her fingers around his. “Then don’t stop.”

Almost as soon as she says it, she’s swept up by Hilde and the other girls that she’d walked with in a dance. To her surprise, it’s easy for her to laugh with them as they move in a circle. She meets Rio’s eyes as they turn and he’s smiling.

Across the circle of dancers, Beth spots Brigitte, her cheeks pink and her face aglow. Has she slipped her magic herbs into the pocket of the butcher’s boy? Will he fall in love with her? If he does, will it make any difference in the path that has been set out for him?

Even without having to think much on it, she knows that it won’t. The butcher’s son will marry Anneke. If Brigitte is lucky, the herbs won’t work and he won’t fall in love with her. She’ll have her heart broken, but only a little and all at once. She won’t suffer from seeing the man she loves and who loves her returning home to his wife and family every night, caught in limbo in constant hope that he’ll pick her.

He won’t.

——————————————

The day after the bonfire, Beth is tired, but says nothing about it. She has her English lesson, then lunch before she has to go to Rio’s studio. She’s always nervous to sit for him, but it’s worse today. She hasn’t seen him since the night before when the dancing had come to a stop and he’d been across the circle from her, standing a few feet back, framed by Brigitte and another girl.

She’s relieved at first, when he says nothing, but grows more frustrated as he remains stoic. She shifts, refuses to look at him, but he never says anything, never gives her directions about how to sit or hold her book, nothing.

“Why won’t you say anything?” she finally gives in.

“What do you want me to say?” 

Beth stands up and walks over to him. “Did you mean it?”

He looks away, but his eyes fall on the canvas - his painting of her - and his jaw tightens. Beth reaches up and sets her hand on his jaw, turns his face back to hers.

She knows without him saying anything that he needs her to be the first to act, so she pushes herself up on her toes and pulls his head down until their lips meet.

Kissing him, Beth feels as though they’re still where they were last night, like she’d stepped towards him as he had done the same, meeting in the middle, in the centre of the fire and now they are consumed by it. She never wants to leave.

———————————————

They have to be careful, but Beth wants nothing more than to be reckless every time that Rio is near.

The art lessons continue, Annie in tow, but now when he puts his hand over hers to lead it through making a shape, it doesn’t feel detached. His palm is always warm, he smells every so slightly of the paints that he uses, no matter how hard he scrubs himself, it clings to him, a marker of his profession.

In the afternoons, he continues to paint her, although sometimes Beth stands up and goes to him so that he’ll kiss her. The first time that he had, he’d quickly pulled away and held up his hands. “I can’t,” he murmured, showing the paint on his fingers. “Your dress.”

The next day, Beth kissed him before he could begin work, while his hands were still clean. His hands had felt so perfect on her waist that she thought she would die.

“Every flower has a meaning, you know,” Annie says one afternoon. It’s mere days after the first time that Beth and Rio had kissed, but it already feels to her like a lifetime has passed.

Rio hums. “So I’ve heard,” he replies, sounding amused.

“What are you drawing, Beth?” Annie asks, leaning over to look at the paper that Beth is sketching on. “A gardenia? What’s that one mean?”

“It means,” Beth says, “that my sister ought to work on her own page.”

Annie giggles and returns to sketching a rose. Beth meets Rio’s eye, then looks away quickly. He knows what it means just as well as she does.

The next day, when she gathers her things for their drawing lesson, the drawing of gardenia is gone.

——————————————

“You said that you loved someone before,” Beth tries to say casually, but Rio’s expression tells her that she has failed. 

“I said that I nearly married someone once,” he answers. “I’m not so sure that it was love.”

“Oh.” She falls silent, letting him paint. 

He sighs. “We were young. She did not want to travel, nor did she wish to be left behind. We broke the engagement.”

“That’s what you meant by the life of a painter’s wife,” Beth recalls. He nods. “I’d love to travel,” she tells him. “I’ve never been far, but I love to read books about places that I’ve never been and imagine going there.”

He lifts his head. “So you read of England?”

The reminder is a bucket of cold water over her head. “I have,” she says. “I am not sure that I will like it. Have you been?”

“Once,” he replies. 

“How did you find it?”

He pauses. “Grey. Especially in London.”

Beth tightens, then loosens her hold on her book. “My husband-to-be spends most of his time in London, I’m told. But he has an estate in the north. Perhaps it will be better there.”

“Perhaps,” he agrees. 

That evening, Aunt Marjorie goes to visit the neighbour. Beth knows that she won’t return until the sky begins to lighten again in the morning, if even then.

She slips into the room that Rio has taken as his studio, but he isn’t there.

The night that Beth and Annie had come to spy on the painting, he’d come from a connected room and she knows from conversations with him, that he stays by the studio. She goes to the door and tries it. The knob turns in her hand and the door opens.

Beth steps inside to find Rio in the process of sitting up on his bed. His shoes and socks are nowhere in sight, but Beth scarcely notices because he isn’t wearing a shirt either.

“What are you doing here, Elizabeth?” he asks.

She shuts the door behind her. “I’m here because I want to be,” she replies.

He stands and his trousers slip lower. They’re partially undone, she realizes, growing hot at the realization. 

“Elizabeth,” Rio says quietly, walking towards her. With the closed windows, he’s only lit by the fire and candles. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“No,” she says. “I shouldn’t. But I am here. With you.”

He’s just a hair’s breadth away now, his bare toes nearly touching the tips of her own slippers. Beth steps out of them and pushes them aside with her foot. She’s still wearing her stockings, but it feels definitive. Like she’s making a declaration to him.

It’s one he understands because a second later, he’s kissing her. Beth brings her hands up to clutch at his shoulder, his head, wanting him even closer. She knows that she wants him in a way that she shouldn’t. But it’s too late for should and shouldn’t - for either of them.

His hands on her waist pull her away from the door and lead her to a desk, which he lifts her on top of.

“The bed,” Beth suggests when he pulls away to breath.

“No.”

She looks up at him.

“Don’t ask that of me,” he says. “There are only so many temptations that a man can withstand.”

“And if I don’t wish you to withstand -“

He covers her mouth with a finger. “This changes nothing. It can change nothing. I am not an escape, Elizabeth. I can’t be.”

Beth looks down. He’s right, she knows that he’s right. She will still go to England, still marry a man that she’s never met, that no one she knows has ever met. There’s no way for her to know how badly he would take it if he were to find that he was not her first.

“I want to be,” he says, finger dipping under her chin to bring her eyes back up. “I wish that I could be. But I can’t and as a result, there are choices that we cannot make.”

“Will you kiss me again?” Beth asks with a weak smile.

Rio laughs and lowers his head to press against hers. “Of course.” And he does. 

Beth feels light headed, like she can’t breathe. She wearing a simple day dress, the kind of thing that she can mostly put on and take off herself. It’s not as though it’s too tight or restrictive, but Beth finds her hands coming to the top of it and beginning to undo it.

She half expects Rio to stop her, to pull away, but doesn’t. Instead, he helps her, then tugs down her shift to free her breast. When he takes it in his hand, Beth expects it to feel strange, and to some extent it does, but more than that, it feels wonderful. His thumb and forefinger worry at the peak until it hardens as Rio pulls away from her mouth to kiss her jaw, then her neck.

Beth shivers at the sensation that his fingers are giving her, arching slightly to push herself further into his hand. He squeezes gently.

Her own hands roam over his shoulders. He’s not quite muscled like the men that she sees sometimes at the port, hoisting heavy barrels to load onto ships or like the boys in the fields, certainly not like the men that she meets at parties who pad their clothing in attempts to give themselves form. 

Even though she’s seated on the desk, Rio still manages to press her back until she’s lying underneath him, her legs locked around his waist, layers of her skirt making it difficult for him to step closer.

Letting go of him, Beth grabs the fabric and pulls it up over her knees.

Rio groans into her neck as he takes his hand from her breast to touch her leg above where her stocking ends. “You’re beautiful,” he tells her.

Beth flushes as he brings his lips back to hers. 

“I’d paint you like this, if it were permitted,” he says. “I’d paint you as Aphrodite, Helen of Troy.”

Beth shakes her head. “Not them.”

“No?” Rio places little kisses all over her face as he slowly lifts her skirt a little higher.

“No,” she insists. “They were not faithful. Or they were pawns in the games of gods.”

“Then who?” he asks, face hovering over hers.

Beth thinks for a moment, then smiles. “Persephone or maybe Penelope.”

Rio’s eyes tighten. “Women who had to be alone.”

“Women who loved their husbands and whose husbands loved them in return,” Beth corrects him. “It didn’t matter that Odysseus was gone all those years. He came back. And Hades was always there when Persephone returned to the Underworld.”

“And so for half of the year, she lived in darkness,” he says, brushing her hair out of her face.

“Perhaps she needed it,” Beth replies, “after so many hours in the sun.”

He laughs, letting his head fall into the curve of her neck. “You continue to surprise me.”

“Is that bad?”

His head comes back up. “No,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s good.” He brings his hands to her face and holds her in place - not that she wants to move - while he kisses her deeply. Beth feels him stealing her breath, though she’s more than willing to give it, so perhaps it is not theft.

It quickly becomes not enough and she wants his hands on her again, so she breaks the kiss and demands, “Touch me.”

Rio doesn’t hesitate. At the first touch of his fingers on her bare leg, slowly going higher and higher up, she gasps. It turns to a moan when he settles at the juncture of her thighs and very, very carefully touches her. He pulls Beth’s other breast free and gives it the same attention he had given the first. All the while, he rubs his fingers against her.

Beth wouldn’t know how to describe what she’s feeling even if she understood how Rio was causing it. But it doesn’t matter if she knows any of that because she’s experiencing it, biting her lip in an attempt keep quiet even though she wants to make noises. 

It gets more intense and Beth grabs Rio’s neck as it overcomes her, letting out a whimper. He kisses her gently, continuing to move his fingers under her skirt until she clamps her thighs shut around his hand because it’s just too much.

He chuckles. “If you want me to stop touching you, you’re going to have to let my hand go.”

She makes herself part her legs again and Rio takes his hand away. Beth doesn’t know what she’s expecting him to do, but it certainly isn’t to lift his fingers to his lips and lick them.

Her eyes widen and she watches as he undoes his trousers. He pushes his hand into them and groans.

“I want to see,” Beth tells him, sitting up a little so that she can push his trousers down as his arm moves. She catches her first glimpse of his cock as he fists it, stroking. “Does it hurt?” she asks.

He shakes his head. “Feels good.”

Beth looks down at his hand and presses her thighs together. 

“I’ve done this every morning,” he says, “thinking of you.”

She meets his gaze, aware that he can probably see how shocked she is. “You do?” 

“Yes. I picture your breasts, your lips,” he falters, moaning, “your thighs. Tomorrow morning, I’ll do it knowing how your wet cunt feels on my fingers. Imagining what it looks like.”

His hand picks up speed and Beth squirms. She isn’t completely uneducated. She knows that if this were the act of sex, he would be inside of her. It wouldn’t be his hand squeezing his cock, it would be her body. Swallowing, she lies back down on the desk and pulls her skirt up as she parts her thighs a little more.

His eyes leave her face and his jaw hardens as he looks at her, opening herself to his gaze. 

Rio shudders and pulls away, groaning until his head lands between her breasts. His shoulders tremble. Beth wishes that she could paint him so that she might never forget this moment.

———————————————

The next day, there are no lessons, which is just as good because Beth can’t stop thinking about the night before. She has to keep pressing her thighs together when she remembers Rio’s fingers after he touched her and after he touched himself.

Instead, Aunt Marjorie has the seamstress come for a fitting of one of Beth’s many new dresses for a life in England. She wants to cry, but she lifts her chin and bears it all morning. She sits for Rio again, but Aunt Marjorie comes in to see what progress has been made.

It is as though the whole world is conspiring against them. Annie develops a cough, Beth goes to town, there are visitors. But still, they manage to steal what moments they can.

Rio teases her about how easily she reddens, she scolds him for how slowly he paints.

“There’s a reason for that,” he says to her, suddenly serious and Beth feels awful.

Every day, he makes progress on the portrait. He must. Sooner or later, he will finish and then it will be the end. One night as Beth lays in bed, she thinks about going to the studio and setting the canvas on fire. Surely he would have to start again if that were to happen. She could keep him n her life for longer. But she can’t destroy something of Rio’s, even if she wants to.

“Will you draw something for me?” she asks him one night when they sit by the fire in his room.

He laughs. “Why?”

Beth takes his hand and squeezes. “So that I won’t forget you.”

He turns serious. “It - it isn’t a good idea,” he says quietly, touching her cheek. “If your husband were to find it.”

“It doesn’t need to be your likeness,” she retorts, putting her hand over his. “You could draw, I don’t know, a field of flowers. Something that I can hold onto.”

He doesn’t say anything, but two days later, when he hands her the book that she’s been using as a prop, there is a page marked. Beth opens it and finds that Rio has drawn a picture of her, in profile, mid-laugh.

She looks up at him and swallows. “Thank you,” she whispers.

Rio nods, then retreats behind his canvas, to what might otherwise be a safe distance. After all, with the space between them, it isn’t like they can touch. But it doesn’t matter because he’s looking at her in the flesh and creating her image with his hands. Even if he isn’t touching her cheek, he’s painting it. Even if his fingers aren’t in her hair, he’s teasing out every strand, every curl.

It makes Beth ache.

And then one day, he sets down his palette and wipes his hands on a cloth to clean them.

“It has to end,” he says, not looking at her.

“What?” Beth stands up. She must have heard him wrong. He can’t have said that.

“It must, Elizabeth.”

“No,” she says, walking over to him. 

His eyes come up to her face. “We always knew.”

“I love you,” she whispers. Beth wipes at her cheeks and she sees his hand twitch towards her only to stop and fist at his side.

“You’ll forget about me,” he says quietly.

“I won’t,” Beth replies. “I don’t think I ever will.”

“Then I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want you to be sorry,” Beth says, giving up on trying to stop her tears. “I want you to understand.”

“Understand what, Elizabeth?” He turns away from her and puts his hands on the table, leans on them. “That I’ve spent weeks painting you for another man, one that neither of us have ever met, making it clear how beautiful you are, painting you in a way that will make him fall in love with you and hoping that no one notices that the emotion in my brush isn’t feigned?”

Beth wraps her arms around her middle.

“I cannot -“ he sighs, slumping a little. “You cannot ask me to choose, cannot offer me that choice, because I will be selfish. And I will ruin you.”

“No, you won’t -“ Beth tries to say, but he cuts her off.

“What do you think happens to girls who spurn wealthy husbands and marry painters?” He spins on her. “What do you think happens to painters who seduce the subjects of their paintings, stealing them from other men?”

Beth swallows.

“It isn’t just you either,” he goes on. “What of Annie? She’d be tainted, her chances for a comfortable life gone before she’s even old enough to know what it means.”

Beth lifts her head. “I have my own money,” she says. 

Rio looks confused.

“This house,” Beth says. “The estate. It’s mine, not my aunt’s. I’ve been sitting in on business meetings since I was a child. I knew the state of my parents’ accounts and how to manage them. They are still under my management, even if my aunt pretends that they are not. Why do you think she dislikes me so much?”

He stares at her. 

“Her brother, my father, went to a great deal of trouble ensuring that they could not be taken from me. She longs to send me far away so that she can manage them on my behalf as she sees fit. She’ll do the same to Annie once she’s old enough.”

Rio steps towards her.

“So don’t you dare be a coward and then say that it is for my protection,” Beth snaps and flees the room.

She’s sobbing in her bed when Annie joins her. 

“What’s wrong?” her little sister asks, stroking Beth’s hair the way that Beth does with her.

Beth hugs Annie. “I love him.”

“Oh.” Annie’s quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry.”

That’s all there is to say.

—————————————————

When Beth is called into her aunt’s room two days later, Rio is also there, standing stiffly by a canvas.

Her aunt looks aglow. “Come and see!” She gestures from Beth to join her in looking at the painting. She walks slowly, dreading what she’ll see.

She almost wants to shut her eyes as she rounds the canvas to see what he’s painted. The second she lays eyes on it, her throat closes up. Because he’s made her beautiful. 

“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” Aunt Marjorie exclaims, grabbing Beth’s hand. The familiarity of the action is a shock. Beth can’t remember the last time that her aunt simply touched her like this. 

She looks at Rio, whose face is unreadable. He won’t meet her eye.

“If that is all,” he says, directing his words to her aunt, “then I will take my leave. My things are already packed and I have a commission in Milan.”

“Ah, Milan!” Aunt Marjorie beams. “Of course. Payment has been arranged.”

He nods.

She waves him away and Rio goes. Beth pulls her hand from her aunt’s. “What is it, Beth?”

Beth nods her head towards the painting. “I should tell him thank you as well.”

“Oh,” Aunt Marjorie says. “Of course.”

Beth keeps her steps measured as she leaves the room and crosses the landing to the stairs. If he leaves, it’ll be too late to speak to him.

“Wait!” she calls from the top of stairs, seeing him almost at the door that someone is opening for him.

He looks up at her and their eyes meet. He stops and waits for her to reach the bottom of the steps.

“Yes?” he asks.

“I -“ Beth swallows. “I simply wished to thank you. For everything.”

Rio nods once. Beth steps closer, desperate for his last words to her to be something else, but he’s already turning and walking through the open door.

She watches his back until someone closes the door, shutting her off from the sight of him walking away and leaving her behind.

——————————————————

_Five years later_

Rio stands by his painting, at a slight distance so that he can watch people take it in.

The painting itself has been finished for well over two years, but it took him time to be willing to display it. It seems fitting that it should be here, so close to -

“It’s a lovely piece,” a young woman says as she studies it. A girl, really. There’s something familiar about the cut of her chin, the tilt of her eye as she turns her head towards him. He recognizes her once she smiles.

“Rio!” Annie says, stepping towards him, an older woman - not the aunt - following her. “It’s yours isn’t it?”

He nods. “It’s a pleasure to see you again,” he lies.

Annie seems to know exactly how much he means that because she shakes her head. “You’re well?”

“Yes. You as well? And -“ he hesitates, “your family?”

Her smile vanishes. “Aunt Marjorie passed away the spring after you painted Beth.”

“I’m sorry to hear of your loss,” Rio says. “It must have been hard for you, losing her so soon after Beth left.”

“Left?” Annie’s expression turns confused.

“For England.”

Annie cocks her head. “Beth never left for England,” she tells him.

“What?” Rio can’t hold back his shock.

“The young Lord Boland eloped with some younger daughter of a baron or something,” Annie waves her hand like the details are insignificant, “and when Aunt Marjorie grew ill, Beth didn’t seek a suitor for herself.” She lowers her voice and steps closer to say, “She’s unmarried.”

Rio inhales sharply. 

“She’s in love,” Annie goes on, looking over at Rio’s painting and the brief hope he’d felt when Annie said that her sister was still unmarried fizzles out. Of course she’s in love. She should be. “He left, though. Hasn’t come back.”

He swallows. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I always told myself that if I saw him again, I would drag him back to her by the ear,” Annie says. “But I don’t think that it will be necessary actually.”

“No?” 

“I think he’s still in love with her too.”

Annie’s eyes are on the figure just off centre, the one that looks like Elizabeth. The only picture that he had allowed himself to paint of her after leaving. Or rather, the only one that he hadn’t been able to force himself to paint over. The hope returns, as it always does, no matter how hard he tries to temper it.

Her gaze comes back to him. “Does he?” she asks him.

Rio nods.

“She isn’t here,” Annie says. “She’s at home.”

He doesn’t think as he pushes his way out of the gallery. It takes him hours to get to the country house that he had spent a few bittersweet weeks years before. He goes to the kitchen door and the cook recognizes him.

“So it was you,” the woman says, eyeing him.

He doesn’t know how to respond, so he stays silent. 

The cook considers him for a moment. “She’s taken her aunt’s study as her own. You remember where it is?”

Rio’s already moving. He makes himself knock on the door to the study before opening it. She’s standing by the fireplace and his first glimpse of her is her profile lit from behind by flames. It reminds him of the night when their eyes had met across the fire. It had pained him not to kiss her. He thinks that he would have walked through the fire in order to do so.

“What is it?” she asks, continuing to read a sheet of paper.

Rio takes another step, doesn’t say anything. 

She sighs and lifts her head, turns to look at him and gasps.

“What is this?” she demands, then rubs her eyes. “Am I asleep? Are you a ghost?”

“No,” Rio says, stepping closer to her. “I’m real and we are both awake.”

She shakes her head. “No, you aren’t. You can’t be. You’re gone.”

“I was. But today, something peculiar happened and I saw a face that I once knew. Annie has grown up.” Rio’s voice slowly gains more strength. “She told me that by chance, her sister had never married. There was no marriage to an English lord, nor to anyone else. She said that her sister continued to live here, that her sister loved a man who had left.”

Beth lifts her chin. “He did.” Her voice is fragile and despite the defiant tilt of her head, Rio can read her true feelings.

“And if he were to return? Would she love him still, I wonder,” Rio says, reaching the carpet by the fireplace. The paper in her hand flutters down as she continues to stare at Rio. “He has never stopped loving her.”

Her eyes fill with tears. “Oh, Rio,” she says, crossing the rest of the carpet and throwing her arms around him. She pulls his face to hers and for the first time in years, he feels as though he has every piece of himself. He’d left one with her without meaning to. As he kisses her, he returns the one that he had taken from her all those years ago, restoring the balance that they had both needed so badly. It's blissful peace after years of turmoil. He won't leave again, or if he does, they'll go together.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: I had already started writing this when I got the prompt and even before seeing Portrait of a Lady on Fire, I was tossing around the idea of Rio being hired to paint Beth. Title is from La Jeune Fille en Feu, which is sung during the movie. It's Latin for "I cannot flee". Gardenia (apparently) means 'secret love'. I very briefly considered researching things like inheritance laws in coastal regions of the Netherlands in the 18th century but then I decided that I didn't want to.
> 
> Unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine. If there's anything that you think should be warned for, please let me know. Hope that you and your loved ones are all safe and healthy out there. Also, watch Portrait of a Lady on Fire! It's wonderful.


End file.
